World Families Forums - Ancient Welsh Query

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What is the current wisdom regarding the ancient Welsh tribes? There seems to be a lot written about Scotland's Picts, but nowhere near as much concerning Wales' ancient peoples.From what I have read, it seems some are convinced of an ancient link between Iberia & Wales. I gather any mention of Iberia tends to lead to disputes, but would like to know the latest regarding that theory.I have to say that many Welsh people have the look of Iberians. Chris Coleman, the current Welsh football manager, certainly has the look of someone more accustomed to Mediterranean climes! I've seen so many Welsh folk who are extremely dark-haired, with complexions not typical of these isles (Britain). Is there anyone who is considered an authority on this issue? Any books I should be reading? Does DNA evidence corroborate the Iberian link?Bob

The only person to suppose a link with Iberia was the Roman Tacitus, who just guessed that " the swarthy faces of the Silures, their generally curly hair and the fact that Hispania lies opposite, all lead one to believe that Iberians crossed in ancient times and occupied the land." (Agricola, 11.)

His notion of geography was clearly rather vague! These guesses on the basis of looks could lead us far astray. I know of no support for such a link from genetics.

Aside from the R1b connection (which is probably not significant, atleast in a Out-of-Iberia sort of way), the latest genetic papers ("Genes and geography in Europe"... etc) show British (including welsh samples I suppose) and Irish clustering with other Northern Europeans like Germans and Dutch. The Spanish nearly always cluster quite far away.

What is the current wisdom regarding the ancient Welsh tribes? There seems to be a lot written about Scotland's Picts, but nowhere near as much concerning Wales' ancient peoples.From what I have read, it seems some are convinced of an ancient link between Iberia & Wales. I gather any mention of Iberia tends to lead to disputes, but would like to know the latest regarding that theory.I have to say that many Welsh people have the look of Iberians. Chris Coleman, the current Welsh football manager, certainly has the look of someone more accustomed to Mediterranean climes! I've seen so many Welsh folk who are extremely dark-haired, with complexions not typical of these isles (Britain). Is there anyone who is considered an authority on this issue? Any books I should be reading? Does DNA evidence corroborate the Iberian link?Bob

The traditional view of many British (including Welsh) historians and writers in the 20th century (there are so many old books that attest to this) was that the Welsh had an "Iberian" origin. In the traditional view, these Iberians were pre-Celtic - the Celts said to be later invaders.

I believe this view arose for two reasons:1. The views of Tacitus that the Silures were dark complexioned and resembled the Spanish.2. The fact that physical anthropologists have observed that the Welsh were darker than the English in terms of hair and eye colour.

Carleton Coon, the American anthropologist summarised this topic quite well in his summary of Great Britain. It should be noted that his work was based on earlier observations of British anthropologists Beddoe and Fleure in the late 19th and early 20th century.

I would advise caution wrt Chris Coleman, who has an English surname. Truly, swarthy, Welsh people are not that common but certainly darker looks are more prevelant than elsewhere in Britain.

Aside from the R1b connection (which is probably not significant, atleast in a Out-of-Iberia sort of way), the latest genetic papers ("Genes and geography in Europe"... etc) show British (including welsh samples I suppose) and Irish clustering with other Northern Europeans like Germans and Dutch. The Spanish nearly always cluster quite far away.

What about mtDNA links?

Also, as I recall the POBI project, which is autosomalDNA, said that Wales clustered closely with Ireland and Northwest France, certainly not Germans and Dutch.

I would recommend reading Cunliffe, Koch, Moffat and Wilson who seem to have a good handle on this from a Culture, Language, Archealogy and Genetics point of view.

There are two view points. One is the Celtic connection with Iberia and I believe that is supported by all of the ablove.

Celtic from the West - Cunliffe and KochEurope Between the Oceans - CunliffeThe Scots a Genetic Journey - Moffat and WilsonThe Sea Kingdoms - Moffat

Another is the Ancient Welsh and Britons.One of the main LGM refugium was in Iberia, so I guess there is also an Iberian connection for the pre Celtic people. This is addressed in some of the above. I will check specific references for you when I get home this evening.

Aside from the R1b connection (which is probably not significant, atleast in a Out-of-Iberia sort of way), the latest genetic papers ("Genes and geography in Europe"... etc) show British (including welsh samples I suppose) and Irish clustering with other Northern Europeans like Germans and Dutch. The Spanish nearly always cluster quite far away.

What about mtDNA links?

Also, as I recall the POBI project, which is autosomalDNA, said that Wales clustered closely with Ireland and Northwest France, certainly not Germans and Dutch.

MtDNA is quite evenly distributed across Europe, although Sykes did report a East-west north south cline which is likely Anglo-Saxon in origin.

As for my comment on Northern Europeans, yes Northern French would be included in that. The team have included thousands of samples from the continent too, and presumably some from Spain, so we will see when their full results are published.

Celtic from the West is quiet expensive so I would hold off for Cunliffe's next conference "Celtic in the West" on Oct 2nd next in Oxford. He should be able to draw stronger conclusions with the new POBI data and all the new SNPs discovered from 1000 Genome project and possibly Geno 2.0.Below is a review of the book. The Scots, A Genetic Journey is a good read and available on Kindle and also deals with The Old Welsh.

I would also caution against using the Silures as a proxy for all of Wales. They were a tribe of southeastern Wales. There were other tribes in various places in Wales, like the Ordovices, the Deceangli, and the Cornovii, to name but three. Only the Silures were described by Tacitus as being swarthy. Most of the Welsh are very fair and typically British looking. Red hair is relatively common in Wales.

Aside from the R1b connection (which is probably not significant, atleast in a Out-of-Iberia sort of way), the latest genetic papers ("Genes and geography in Europe"... etc) show British (including welsh samples I suppose) and Irish clustering with other Northern Europeans like Germans and Dutch. The Spanish nearly always cluster quite far away.

What about mtDNA links?

Also, as I recall the POBI project, which is autosomalDNA, said that Wales clustered closely with Ireland and Northwest France, certainly not Germans and Dutch.

MtDNA is quite evenly distributed across Europe, although Sykes did report a East-west north south cline which is likely Anglo-Saxon in origin.

As for my comment on Northern Europeans, yes Northern French would be included in that. The team have included thousands of samples from the continent too, and presumably some from Spain, so we will see when their full results are published.

The thing is though, Northwest France is to me, Brittany and geographically Brittany is closer to the Basque country (Iberia) than it is to the Netherlands or Northern Germany.

We need to be precise here. Northern France is a large area. From Brittany in the West to the Rhine in the east we're talking 500 miles.

Even Cornwall is geographically closer to Iberia than it is to Northern Germany.

This is a qoute from the comments section at the Royal Society.

Quote

One way to think about Cornwall, Devon and the rest of England is that Cornwall is more representative of the peopling of the British Isles from the Atlantic facing region of Europe, whilst the extensive red English cluster has a large signature from the Belgium/Denmark/North Germany area. Devon can then be thought of as a zone of mixture between the two. The tight boundaries are very interesting and may well be a result of political spheres of influence

I would also caution against using the Silures as a proxy for all of Wales. They were a tribe of southeastern Wales. There were other tribes in various places in Wales, like the Ordovices, the Deceangli, and the Cornovii, to name but three. Only the Silures were described by Tacitus as being swarthy. Most of the Welsh are very fair and typically British looking. Red hair is relatively common in Wales.

Completely wrong. Go and read Coon's General Summary of Great Britain again.

Population surveys of actual Welsh people (mainly Beddoe and Fleure) that Coon used as basis for his summary of Britain, showed that darker features were more prevalent in North, Mid and West Wales, not the South East inhabited by the Silures.

High incidences of red hair in Wales, found by Beddoe, were restricted to a few localities in South Wales near to the English border, an area that historically has received Norman/Flemish settlers in the Middle Ages and a large influx of English migrants during Industrial times.

Overall red hair was 6.2% in Welsh Wales when the survey was conducted in the 1910s and 1930s.

Isn't there a hot spot in North Wales for a sub clade of Haplogroup E?

I believe it was Abergele, a seaside resort town on the North Wales coast and hardly a good representation for the Welsh people.

These towns along the coast such as Rhyl, Llandudno and Abergele are popular retirement destinations for people from Liverpool and Birmingham and have been for many years. Also, there are very few native Welsh speakers in Abergele, which attests to its anglicisation in the 20th century.

I honestly wonder if the people that carry out dna studies in Britain know anything about the local history of the places they sample. The theory about Haplogroup E being Roman soldiers is probably nonsense.

I would like to know if the Haplogroup E people in Abergele had Welsh surnames?

The only person to suppose a link with Iberia was the Roman Tacitus, who just guessed that " the swarthy faces of the Silures, their generally curly hair and the fact that Hispania lies opposite, all lead one to believe that Iberians crossed in ancient times and occupied the land." (Agricola, 11.)

His notion of geography was clearly rather vague! These guesses on the basis of looks could lead us far astray. I know of no support for such a link from genetics.

If I am recalling correctly, the Romans had a really messed up idea of the coast of western and northern France and thought it basically ran in a straight diagonal line from the Pyrennees to the Rhine instead of the north-south orientated west coast followed by a near right angle turn east along the north coast. In doing so they wrongly rejected and mocked earlier more informed geographies (cant remember if it was Pytheas, Avienus or both) that had a much more accurate idea of the west and north coast. I understand that this distortion is how they got the idea that western Britain and Ireland lay near Spain when in fact it was far closer to northern Gaul just like the rest of Britain. I think Cunliffe wrote a little paperback on Pytheas that discusses all of this.

Although I have gradually been won over to the Celts from the west ideas in some form I still think there is far too much emphasis put on the Iberian end of it which was just one extremty of a zone that stretched from Portugal to southern Holland. I still sense the influence of Book of Invasions and the early DNA study idea of R1b as comming out of an Iberian ice age refugia in that. The centre of that network was probably somewhere like NW France and contacts were probably relay style with the people at stage in the network mainly only knowing the nearest link in the chain to them. The emphasis on Iberia at one extreme end of the network seems unwarranted in my opinion. Also, people are wrong to think this network commenced in the beaker period and remained intact up to the end of the Atlantic Bronze Age 2000 years later. They are completely different phases with a break of c. 1000 years or more in between.

Am I being extremely naive in taking into account FTDNA's 'Ancestral Origins' matches? I appreciate that at 12/12 & 11/12 these may be fairly meaningless, but I wonder if they represent ancient links?My surname is via the Anglo-Scottish border & tends to match the British Isles, Ireland, Portugal & France at percentages between 1% to 1.6%, with other countries generally at far far smaller percentages than those. At 12/12 we get Wales at 8.6%, Scotland at 7%, England, both Irelands, France , Belgium & Spain at approx 6.8%. Germany, Holland & Switzerland tend to be under 5%. My amateurish guess would be that the higher Welsh score is significant, possibly suggesting a Brythonic Celt origin?Is the above at all logical? At the 37, 67 & 111 levels we are basically British Isles & ireland.Bob

I would also caution against using the Silures as a proxy for all of Wales. They were a tribe of southeastern Wales. There were other tribes in various places in Wales, like the Ordovices, the Deceangli, and the Cornovii, to name but three. Only the Silures were described by Tacitus as being swarthy. Most of the Welsh are very fair and typically British looking. Red hair is relatively common in Wales.

Completely wrong . . .

No, you are completely wrong. The Silures were in fact a tribe of southeastern Wales, and, as I reported on another thread, an actual genetic study found that Wales has one of the highest frequencies of the genetic signature for red hair of any place in the British Isles.

Actually read what I wrote: "Red hair is relatively common in Wales."

Also notice that I was writing about the ancient Silures and not about Coon and Beddoe, etc. What I wrote was absolutely correct.

Hmmm. I was desperately trying to avoid getting side-tracked into this. As I'm sure you guessed, I was meaning North & South. FTDNA list both, & they list them at 6.4% & 6.6%, so for a quiet life, let's say 6.5% for the entire population of the first land mass you might reach sailing west from Liverpool or Fishguard. Bob

My two cents is that 12 and 25 marker geographic reporting information is probably only accurately helpful to determine if you are from Europe or East Asia or Africa or native American. Deeper than that, that level of matching may have some truth in in the majority of the time but there are too many exceptions that it worthless.

No problem, Mike. I agree with your assertions & tend to think of 37 markers as we did the 12 marker level several years ago. I try to get our surname group to upgrade to 67, plus if their funds permit, 111 markers. Nevertheless, I still can't resist seeing if anything makes sense from the limited data we have access to.On a different tack: I recall a TV programme in recent years where they pinpointed the origin of Stonehenge's structure to Wales. They then experimented with various implements to show how the slabs could have been transported & erected. I'm really looking forward to PoBI's results.Bob